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University of North Carolina Athletics
The Carolina Way By Dean Smith - Introduction
January 27, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 27, 2004
Dean Smith, the most successful coach in college basketball history and among the most beloved, offers his comprehensive program for building and maintaining winning teams in sports, business, and life in his new book, The Carolina Way. Today, TarHeelBlue.com reveals Coach Smith's introduction to the book. The Carolina Way is available in bookstores on Feb. 2.
INTRODUCTION
Is coaching management? I've been asked the question many times and still don't have a definitive answer. However, Dr. Jerry Bell, my collaborator on this book and a business professor, consultant, and leader with impeccable credentials, says emphatically that coaching is management. He argues that good leadership qualities are transferable from one occupation to another, so I'm going to yield to his considerable wisdom and experience.
Our basketball program at North Carolina certainly had a strong philosophy and mission, which produced extraordinary results over a long period of time, thanks to the terrific players and people we attracted to our program. We believed in following a process instead of dwelling on winning or worrying about consequences. We asked our players to concern themselves only with things within their control, so our mission statement was: Play hard; play smart; play together. We knew if we did those things, we would be successful a large percentage of the time. We wanted the players' focus and attention and tried to help them avoid distractions. In addition to winning hundreds of games, our players graduated and went on to great careers, and while at Chapel Hill they proved to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when talented individuals sacrifice for the team, everybody wins.
When I wrote my memoirs several years ago, two chapters in the book attracted much attention, judging by the mail I received. One of them, -I Might Be Wrong but...," dealt with what I think about matters of theology and in other areas of life. The other chapter, -The Carolina Way," was a brief review of the things we taught and why. After hearing from so many businesspeople who asked questions about the Carolina Way, I began to understand that maybe coaching is management after all. That seed had first been planted in 1990, when Jerry Bell invited me to be on the faculty of the Young Presidents' Organization University at St. Moritz, Switzerland. He was chairman of the faculty of this particular session. The YPO is comprised of leaders who became presidents of their organizations before they reached the age of thirty-nine and whose companies were of at least a certain minimal size. The suggested title for my session was -Coaching Is Management." I persuaded Jerry to make the title a question instead of a statement. The Young Presidents asked many good questions after my talk, such as -What do you do with a prima donna who gets the job done but is not a team player?" I replied that in my role as a basketball coach, I wouldn't enjoy having such a person on the team if he didn't change, so I'd probably hope that he'd transfer. The Young Presidents were particularly interested in questioning me about two other areas of concern: How did we motivate our players to play hard and accept discipline? And how did we get them to put aside individual goals for the good of the team? There I was in this business environment talking to these dynamic young leaders about motivation, teamwork, and how to get people to work hard for team goals, and it suddenly seemed abundantly clear that coaching a college basketball team and managing a business do have some common issues. Also, although I didn't know it at the time, I later learned that the Young Presidents graded the faculty and seemed to be highly interested in what I had to say. Dr. Bell knew all along that coaching is management. I'm leaning in that direction now.
There are some differences, of course. For example, our players at North Carolina loved playing basketball and wanted to be at practice and were willing to put in the hard work to succeed. They were talented at it, or they wouldn't have been on our team. North Carolina plays basketball at a very high level. Not every manager can coach such an eager team. Maybe it was easier for me to lead my players, who wanted to be there, than it is for a business manager to lead members of her sales department who feel they have to be there. If I taught eighth grade, I'd prefer teaching an elective subject rather than a course that the students were required to take.
The idea for this book came from John Kilgo, a writer and longtime observer of our North Carolina basketball program, who earlier helped me write my memoirs. He too thought that the qualities that made our program successful would benefit people in other professions. Again, I was slow coming to that conclusion. One of my former players, Dr. David Chadwick, wrote a book several years ago titled Twelve Leadership Principles of Dean Smith. Well, I never knew that I had twelve principles of leadership and suggested to Dave that maybe they were what he thought might be my leadership principles based on what he had observed. Still, we all have a philosophy, whether we know it or not, and I've come around a little. Kilgo believes that readers can take things from our philosophy and benefit from them, and I agree that could be the case. Whether you're leading a basketball team, a nurses' school, a small insurance office, or a large corporation, there are certain common denominators. Honesty, integrity, discipline administered fairly, not playing favorites, recruiting the right people, effective practice and training, and caring are foundations that any organization would be wise to have in place. The most important thing in good leadership is truly caring. The best leaders in any profession care about the people they lead, and the people who are being led know when the caring is genuine and when it's faked or not there at all. I was a demanding coach, but my players knew that I cared for them and that my caring didn't stop when they graduated and went off to their careers. My parents taught me as a boy that all people are equally loved by the Creator and deserving of respect. They imbued me with core values and provided the opportunity for me to have a spiritual foundation, which placed great emphasis on being of service to others. If I've failed in any way to follow through on that, then it's my fault, because the training was there.